In a new interview with The Great Southern Brainfart, SABATON frontman Joakim Broden discusses his love for TWISTED SISTER, history, and just what it’s like to play in front of 60,000 people. An excerpt follows:

Q: I know that you are a huge Twisted Sister fan. What was it about them that made you want to pursue music?

A: "When I was 3 or 4 years old when I saw the video for either 'I Wanna Rock' or 'We’re Not Gonna Take It', I can’t remember which one. My mother was in the kitchen and I was in front of the TV and all of the sudden she hears me scream like a motherfucker. She was thinking, 'Is my son dying? What the fuck is happening here?' She runs into the living room and there I am jumping around screaming like a crazy kid and singing along even though I had never heard the song before. She said, 'Hm, that’s not bad'. [laughs] That was kind of cool because in 1983, looking at guys that looked like that she said, 'Sure, I’ll get you that album'.” [laughs]

Q: I love hearing this. I’ve been a huge Twisted Sister fan since around that time as well.

A: "Yeah. You know, I think that Dee Snider is one of the best front men to ever walk the Earth. I mean, he’s not “thee” best because you obviously have FREDDIE MERCURY and BRUCE DICKINSON but everyone always talks about those guys. I think Dee Snider should mentioned up there with Freddie Mercury and Bruce Dickinson. Not to forget about the music. A good song has a good melody against the chords. It doesn’t mean you have to play 3,000 notes per second. They have good, catchy songs and in combination with is voice of course."

Read the full interview here.

Sabaton will release their new album, Heroes, on May 16th via Nuclear Blast. The band has launched the third trailer for which was filmed during the album presentation in Stockholm, on February 22nd. The trailer was produced and edited by David Havlena of Spark Magazine (CZ) at the Pax studio. In the third episode vocalist Joakim Brodén, bassist Pär Sundström and guitarist Thobbe Englund among other things talk about the historical background of Heroes.

For the upcoming Heroes album, Sabaton have revealed the different tracklists, including all the bonus tracks that will be available. Among them are three cover versions of tracks from METALLICA, BATTLE BEAST and RAUBTIER.

The band comments on the covers:

Metallica's ‘For Whom The Bell Tolls’ - "All of us are old fans of Metallica. The choice of the song was difficult, but we all could agree on that one. As an addition, ‘For Whom The Bell Tolls’ was the first heavy metal song ever performed on a stage by Pär.”

Battle Beast's ‘Out Of Control‘ - "Battle Beast was our secret guest at our latest Sabaton cruise and we all enjoyed watching them perform their songs live. We thought we wanted to support young and upcoming bands and decided to do a cover of them.”

Raubtier's ‘En Hjältes Väg‘ - "Raubtier are our brothers from the north of Sweden. We have played together countless times and in the past, and Thobbe used to be in this band. At a special concert in 2012 Joakim performed this song live together with Raubtier and it awoke the idea of doing a cover-version. Seeing to the song title it was also a natural choice for our latest album Heroes."

Heroes tracklistings:

Standard Jewel Case:

'Night Witches'

'No Bullets Fly'

'Smoking Snakes'

'Inmate 4859'

'To Hell And Back'

'The Ballad Of Bull'

'Resist And Bite'

'Soldier Of 3 Armies'

'Far From The Fame'

'Hearts Of Iron'

Digi and US version:

'Night Witches'

'No Bullets Fly'

'Smoking Snakes'

'Inmate 4859'

'To Hell And Back'

'The Ballad Of Bull'

'Resist And Bite'

'Soldier Of 3 Armies'

'Far From The Fame'

'Hearts Of Iron'

Bonus tracks:

'7734'

'Man Of War'

Digital only:

'Night Witches'

'No Bullets Fly'

'Smoking Snakes'

'Inmate 4859'

'To Hell And Back'

'The Ballad Of Bull'

'Resist And Bite'

'Soldier Of 3 Armies'

'Far From The Fame'

'Hearts Of Iron'

Bonus tracks:

'7734'

'Man Of War'

'For Whom The Bell Tolls'

Japan:

'Night Witches'

'No Bullets Fly'

'Smoking Snakes'

'Inmate 4859'

'To Hell And Back'

'The Ballad Of Bull'

'Resist And Bite'

'Soldier Of 3 Armies'

'Far From The Fame'

'Hearts Of Iron'

Bonus tracks:

'7734'

'Man Of War'

'En Hjältes Väg'

Japan – digital only:

'Night Witches'

'No Bullets Fly'

'Smoking Snakes'

'Inmate 4859'

'To Hell And Back'

'The Ballad Of Bull'

'Resist And Bite'

'Soldier Of 3 Armies'

'Far From The Fame'

'Hearts Of Iron'

Bonus tracks:

'7734'

'Man Of War'

'En Hjältes Väg'

'For Whom The Bell Tolls'

Earbook:

CD 1

'Night Witches'

'No Bullets Fly'

'Smoking Snakes'

'Inmate 4859'

'To Hell And Back'

'The Ballad Of Bull'

'Resist And Bite'

'Soldier Of 3 Armies'

'Far From The Fame'

'Hearts Of Iron'

CD 2 (bonus):

'7734'

'Man Of War'

'En Hjältes Väg'

'For Whom The Bell Tolls'

'Out Of Control'

The new single, 'To Hell And Back', is now available via iTunes, Nuclear Blast MP3, Amazon and Google Play. A lyric video for the track is streaming below.

Trailer #1:

Trailer #2:

BraveWords scribe Mark Gromen's Heroes review can be found here.